False Hurdles -
by eisceire
Summary: Jade faces a challenge like nothing she has ever met and she is alone, with nobody coming to save her. How will she do against the tests that set the fate of her life?


_**«» — FALSE HURDLES — «»**_

 **o0O¥O0o**

Jade sprints across the dead ground, taking a glance over her shoulder for her comrades, as she races into the narrow band of trees; darting upwards and swinging from branch to branch. She makes rapid progress: shifting from tree to tree, high up into the canopy and well away from the ground, which she is crossing with such urgency. That is until a lightning-lashed gash in the highway of branches forces her down into the lower branches. In that the very instant when she is flying in limbo, dropping from higher to lower; right then a tangerine ogre erupts in front of her. Jade has no choice and no chance but to hit the earth and hard, she feels her shoulder mangle into the ground and wrench out of the socket.

« Suckerific » Jade mutters, as she bounds to her feet without a pause or a thought, and slips past the ogre to crash her own shoulder into the next handiest tree trunk; an impromptu surgery that rams her limb back to where it belongs. Jade's world washes away in tears of pain, while the ogre shimmies, shivers and shifts into the shape of Miss Hardman.

Calling Jade back to the fact that she'd only been reliving one of her adventure for her classmates. By the way her teacher is heavy breathing through her nostrils, Jade figures she'd have done better to go with the ogre gambleThis isn't trouble with a capital tee; it's trouble in all caps, bold and underlined; Miss Hardman makes sure Jade doesn't miss a one syllable of the lecture.

« Jade Chan! What precisely do you think you are doing? I allowed the class to take Nature Study in the Playing Fields as a bonus. If you cannot restrain your imagination enough to appreciate that, then I shall have to call your Uncle and tell him you are suspended. »

Miss Hardman gives a long, hard stare up into the trees where Jade had just been hanging and then moves that glare onto Jade.

« What you did was extremely dangerous and someone could have been seriously hurt. This wild fantasy that you've created around your uncle has to stop. In fact, I think it would be better for everyone if you went back to live with your parents. Yes; I'll recommend that to your uncle and the school board. »

« What? Nooooooo! » exclaims Jade and loudly enough for the whole sports-field to hear.

« I'm sorry Jade; but I cannot see any other choice. »

« Happen I can, Miss Hardman. I seen it all. Be a crying shame if you benched our new star sprinter. »

The unexpected speaker is the Coach, who has eyed and valued Jade's athletic performance from across the sports-field. Looking like a spruce edition of the mythical redheaded John Bunyan, but dressed in an army style beige tee with matching jogpants and runners, he looks all too like a live matchstick.

« And I suppose you think you could do better with our young dreamer Mr Merrick? »

The Coach moves toward Jade as he speaks to Miss Hardman; reaching out to clap his arm firmly and possessively across the girl's shoulders.

« Happen I'm not the teacher you are, Miss Hardman, but I sure reckon I can burn off some of this young racer's energy. Give her to me for the session and you all can do your Nature Study in peace. »

« Very well, Mr Heuston, but don't complain to me if Jade proves too difficult for you to handle. »

With that the deal is done and Miss Hardman heads off with the class. Disgust surges through Jade's mind (Sports! Yawnsville!) as she wriggles out from under her captor's arm with doom on her face and defiance in her voice.

« Sorry Sir, I don't do sports. I guess I'd better get back to Miss Hardman. Okay! »

« Happen it is okay … supposing you want your teacher to make that phone call. »

« Rats » mutters Jade and then speaks up « Guess I'm staying with you, Mr Merrick, Sir. »

The Coach seizes Jade's hand in a firm and manly handshake which is all about machismo and force. He wants to get an impression of her, as well as making an impression on her, It doesn't remotely compare to having Hsi Wu winging across the demonplane with his arms clamping her body, in one rib-cracking embrace. Jade readily shrugs off the long minute of introduction and of intimidation, till the Coach relents and attempts the chummer tactic.

« You all have to stop calling me Sir or Mr Merrick; I'm Merry to all the bright young stars on my team. Happen you're on the blocks to be my champion speedster. I can feel it right here. »

Merrick bangs his fist up against his heart, in emphasis. It is all to no good; he can't fool a girl who has learnt her bitter lessons under the treachery of demons. Jade stands with one leg crooked as she folds her arms across her chest, with not a sign of how her hand is aching, as she asks.

« So what do I have to do … Sir ? »

Merry frowns but holds back on saying anything as he leads Jade over to the dug out. Once there, he roots around till he eventually finds a track-top and trunks that won't purely drown her; if at all they're on the snug side. Merrick tosses them to Jade and at once she is stripping and changing: to leave him far more embarrassed then her. For all of the times and places that Jade has had to make a swift change or needed to strip down, gear up and dive under, in search of talismans or trouble, she isn't anyhow shy.

« Ummmm - ooookay. Good that you're ready to peel down. Now suit up and race your bright young heart out. Happen you're under starter's orders for the trial of your life. Show me that you've got more than one lucky sprint in you and you're placed. You all are going to run this barefoot, without there being any track-shoes here for you, but don't you let that trip you none. »

Track-shoes, runners, nothing or whatever; Jade doesn't care at all. She's had to sprint it around junkyards, under fire, over ice, through earthquakes, across space and even the non-space of the Demon Plane. Time was when the only footwear she'd had on was a tattoo of Tarakudo that had spun her whole life; into chaos. Jade had torn across the streets of San Francisco with Uncle's book clutched in her arms and her barefeet hammering the macadam.

None of anything, so far, has been a but a wisp of cloud to the storms of her escapades. The one thing that gets to Jade is how very little of her this sportskit will cover. The most that she normally exposes of herself is her arms and legs, in a full-body swimsuit. For all that her mates take a rise at her coyness, Jade isn't about to risk the questions that will come if anyone gets an eye on the scars she has.

Luckily for Jade, Merrick is as ambitious and covetous as every Coach anywhere. From the dojo with Jackie to the perils with the Chan Clan, Jade is buffed past what most adults can even dream of. Those very muscles are making Merrick's heart pound now: his attention is totally skipping the battlemarks etched into Jade's flesh. The only thing that interests him is the strength of her. It is a power he means to add to his team by any means he can.

For her first test he makes Jade get down and give him fifty push-ups for warm-up and an opener and he isn't letting her get away with any half-measures either. It isn't at all easy for Jade as all of her right side, the shoulder and the hand, really need to recover before she puts herself through this. For all of that, if she could bench-press Tohru with a talisman in her belly or elbow a giant tortoise from out beneath a cleaver then she can surely pump her gossamer weight a half-hundred times.

To be sure, her warm-up only heats up the Coach's ambition. Raging as she is, Jade has lost her cool and her smarts. She wants to show this gloryhound he can't tame her down but this is no way to escape track club — Jade needs to play the klutz and the snail but her pride has overpowered her wits. Coach has seen enough of the preliminaries, he cannot wait to get Jade out on the track. He primes her for a sprint trial with a few choice words.

« Happen you all was mighty fine, from what I seen of you across the field, but reckon you has to show your druthers on the track afore you satisfy me. You all are going to give me five laps of sprint at your top lick. Imagine you're in the Olympics. About to win gold but the pack is an arms-length away. Your rivals are breathing down your neck. Slacken your pace a hair and you can say goodbye to the winning podium. So you all give me your best, when I fire this here pistol. »

Coach surely has put a fire in Jade's belly: telling her to imagine the chase at her back is purely filling her mind, not with any imaginary sport runners, but with the dreadful foes of memory, where victory was no medal or cup but the prize of life itself. To lose those races was to taste captivity, injury, fatality.

Jade rips up the track, virtually flying through all of the laps, as she relives the desperation of running ahead of catastrophe. The time she fled a moon demon in the maze of a spaceship. When she turned tail and dashed away from a giant shadow-eater. Shadowkhan and Enforcers who were forever snapping at her flying heels. A lifetime of running a snap away from the jaws of disaster.

Five laps of a track sprint and those memories pushing her, it almost has Jade break the school record. Coach can barely trust his own stopwatch, he is to astonished even to praise Jade. He needs another test, some proof that what he sees is real.

« Reckon you've a fair chance to be on my team. Happen you've got a turn of speed on you. Needs more than pace to make it in athletics, though. You all need to keep your stride too. If you all can do that, over the hurdles, you've won yourself a tryout. »

Purely unfair, to ask a greenhorn to put on a good showing at the hurdles. To be sure, anyone else will have won a place in the team by half of what Jade has done. It is the very problem, Coach isn't able to believe what he is seeing: he has not the least understanding of the history which drives Jade and he can only trust what is seeing by having Jade beat every test. The last, the final and the least fair of these is hurdles but what are hurdles to Jade? Hurdles are evenly spaced, regularly sized obstacles on a smooth course and safe from offside assaults.

Jade has dodged the Enforcers along the quays, over and around packing crates and equipment, with Tohru ripping up the place and flinging it back at her and Jackie. She has been shipwrecked on an island and had to run from both Enforcers and Simians not just across the jungle floor but through the jungle canopy too. She knows the agility of a cat, from when she was transformed by a cursed statue.

Jade runs the laps of the track with hurdles in place and at barely less speed than on the flat. The Coach, Mr Liam Merrick, is proven more than right. His hope, that Jade has it in her to be the making of his team, is shining bright within him, after all the energy she has shown him. Jade does not care one jot for that: she wants her class, her friends, an ordinary school day.

Athletics! Teams! Sessions! They're far too burdensome and boring for her. Yet so, it is that or risk being sent back to Hong Kong. Jade is going to have to bear it and comply with it, at least until Miss Hardman stops acting the ogre. To be fair, the Coach does offer Jade great prospects.

« Well done Jade; welcome to the first real adventure of your life. »

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 **o0O¥O0o — A.N — o0O¥O0o**

 **The feck! My first name for The Coach was Sean Heuston but the character turned into such a worm there was no way to drag a fine hero like Sean Heuston down in the mud. I could not do it and had to make some other name. Sure and tis plain that Liam Merrick is a play on Limerick but that's poetic as being where Sean Heuston was born.**


End file.
